


like an old wound reopening

by choomchoom



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Exes, Grief/Mourning, M/M, dark cybertron
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:02:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23758078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/choomchoom/pseuds/choomchoom
Summary: For a blink of a moment, the sound of Prowl brought up the feelings that it would have brought four million years ago – security, comfort, and the sense that everything was okay with the world.*Chromedome and Prowl have a conversation on top of a cliff. Later, they have a slightly more productive conversation closer to the ground.
Relationships: Chromedome/Rewind (Transformers), Past Chromedome/Prowl
Comments: 2
Kudos: 35
Collections: Prowl Week





	like an old wound reopening

**Author's Note:**

> this fic refers to events described in Chapter 2 of [Lost and Found](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16119497) as well as canon events. 
> 
> warnings: this is dark cybertron-era chromedome POV. it includes passing references to suicidal thoughts and descriptions of depression and grief.
> 
> title is from Quito by The Mountain Goats.

The Lost Light was back on an alien Cybertron. The crew was kicked off the ship for an inspection so that the engineers might be able to figure out what had gone wrong with the engines upon takeoff and keep it from happening again, and Chromedome hadn’t wanted to be anywhere else. Anywhere but the habsuite he’d once shared with Rewind, doing all he could to feel close to him again.

He found his way to the cliff’s edge without any real thought. He remembered thinking that he didn’t want to talk to anyone or explore the Cybertron that everyone the Lost Light had left behind had created, and then he was at the highest point he could see, gaze divided between the sky and, far below, the ground.

It probably should have disturbed him, that when unchecked his mind kept deviating toward suicide. But right now it just felt silly. The fall from this cliff would bruise his frame, nothing more. And make everyone realize he was a headcase.

But it was comforting, in a strange way, to entertain the option. He could find a way, if he really tried, to end it all. End the pain. The way out made it all the more bearable. It was a step up, he thought, from using mnemosurgery as the same kind of crutch. Death wouldn’t be an honorable way out of grief, but it wouldn’t be quite as reprehensible, would it?

He knew it was Prowl coming up behind him as soon as he heard footsteps. Prowl’s habits, his movements, had changed recently, but despite the shift in his frame’s center of gravity, all sorts of patterns of his were still imprinted on Chromedome’s processor.

For a blink of a moment, the sound of Prowl brought up the feelings that it would have brought four million years ago – security, comfort, and the sense that everything was okay with the world. Chromedome’s scrambled mind, for a moment, ignored four million years of animosity and arguments and occasional outright hatred and fixated on the long-gone good.

So when the rest came – the anger, the revulsion – the wave of it was sickening. Chromedome had forgotten that it was possible to feel emotions other than all-consuming sadness. The anger was a shock to his processor that he was still reeling from when Prowl – Prowl, who had _caused all this_ – actually came up behind him.

He had figured it out. That wasn’t surprising. Chromedome hadn’t necessarily expected it, but he hadn’t anticipated it being a problem. He had thought that he and Rewind, whether they stayed on the Lost Light or not, would never come back to Cybertron again.

And lo and behold, he _and_ Rewind hadn’t. The sadness was back with a vengeance, and the waves of emotion were strong enough that Chromedome was tempted to toss himself over the cliff just for something else to focus on for a few minutes.

Prowl’s fingers on the back of his neck made the anger flash from himself to Prowl. How dare he? Chromedome had been cruel to him, but Prowl knew him well enough to understand that of course he’d had a _reason_. If Prowl had asked nicely, Chromedome might even have restored the memory. It wasn’t like it mattered anymore. It wasn’t like Chromedome had anything left to lose.

But Prowl was cruel about it, and knew exactly what buttons to push to set Chromedome off. Chromedome couldn’t take it, and he refused to run away. Prowl’s frame was hurtling over the edge of the cliff before Chromedome’s processor really caught up with what had happened.

Riding the wave of anger, though, felt better than anything he’d felt in the past weeks. Stupid as it was to get in an honest to Primus fistfight with Prowl, it was better than the alternative. Prowl’s punch to his faceplate was a blessed, needed instant of distraction from the grief.

Even when Ultra Magnus was firmly restraining him while Prowl glowered yards away, energon leaking from his nose and optics flashing with anger of his own, Chromedome felt more lucid than he had in weeks. Lucid enough for the anger to keep simmering, for his guilt over not continuing the search for Dominus Ambus to really feel like purpose instead of just adding to the well of despair, for suicide to not look like the most appealing option.

Ultra Magnus yelled at Prowl, out of what could only have been fondness for Rewind, it was so unlike him. Chromedome would have thanked him, or something, but being on the ground and the breakthrough from barely feeling to feeling everything at once had gone from exhilarating to overstimulating. He had to talk to Prowl, he knew. He had to find out who was the closest thing New Cybertron had to an archivist and ask them about Dominus Ambus, and he had to do the same with the delegation from Caminus. But the thought of talking to anyone just now seemed unbearable.

He found himself in an alley as the sun continued to set, leaning up against the cool metal of a building that already seemed to be breaking down despite how new everything in the Kimia-adjacent shantytown that made up this part of New Cybertron seemed to be. As light bled out of the sky and the stars winked into view, Chromedome remembered not the thousands of nights of making star-pictures with Rewind, but one botched attempt at the same, centuries before, with Prowl.

He’d been so young – they both had. Prowl had been so nervous back then, so distrusting of anything that fell outside his narrow worldview. Still capable of becoming the person he might have become if that worldview hadn’t been ripped out and stomped on a hundred times over.

* * *

There was a fight. The universe was going to end, and then it didn’t. Ultra Magnus commed Chromedome once to report to Optimus Prime, the kind of thing he couldn’t ignore no matter what state his mind was in. He didn’t have the energy to tell Optimus Prime no the way he’d refused Ultra Magnus. He didn’t even feel anything in particular when Megatron refused Optimus’s offer.

Chromedome felt weirdly restless after that. The thought of going back to the ship and locking himself in his and Rewind’s habsuite, for once, was no more appealing than the thought of doing anything else. He could use this burst of – if not motivation, a lessening of the apathy – to ask the questions he’d been meaning to ask of the newcomers and New Cybertron’s historians, but instead he found himself asking a security guard for directions to Prowl’s office.

The security guard, who was presumably just as well informed about Prowl and Chromedome’s very public fight as everyone else on Cybertron was, commed Prowl before answering. Chromedome couldn’t hear their exchange, but the security guard ended the conversation by waving Chromedome forward, apparently intending to escort him to the appropriate office himself.

The security guard went so far as to knock on the door for Chromedome. The door slid open to reveal Prowl, no longer injured but with a slump to his frame that possibly none but Chromedome could recognize as exhaustion.

“Would you like me to stay, sir?” the security guard asked, addressing Prowl before he or Chromedome had a chance to say anything.

“That depends. Are you planning more violence?” Prowl asked Chromedome, tone icy.

“That depends.” Chromedome knew that Prowl knew what he meant.

Prowl stepped aside, opening space for Chromedome to enter the office. “Let him in,” he told the security guard. “And go back to your post.”

Chromedome stepped inside and the door closed behind him. The office was exactly what he had expected of Prowl, even after all these years. Stark, clean surfaces, stacks of datapads that would have been just a performance of workaholism for just about any other mech, but were really necessary for Prowl.

“Is there something I can help you with?” Prowl said with an unexpected note of exasperation.

“I just thought we should talk.”

“You decided to interrupt me from my last day of preparation for the _biggest trial in Cybertronian legal history_ just to _talk_?” Prowl sounded genuinely incredulous. That particular brand of exasperation was one Chromedome had known well long ago but hadn’t been privy to in a very long time.

With the rush of memory that the words elicited, it took Chromedome a moment to piece together what Prowl had actually said. “I didn’t realize the trial started tomorrow.”

Prowl looked at Chromedome then, probingly, like he was seeing things about Chromedome that Chromedome didn’t even know about himself. Another remnant of their long-abandoned partnership that hadn’t been revived in their years as hostile coworkers. Today was a mess.

Prowl sat back down at his desk and waved a hand at Chromedome, managing to make the gesture dismissive somehow. “Say your piece, then.”

“On the Lost Light, Rewind–” Chromedome had to pause and fight back a scream of anguish that threatened to erupt just at saying his conjunx’s name aloud. He hadn’t come here to talk about Rewind, but Rewind was still in every breath and every thought. “Rewind held a storytelling session – several, actually, because – well, the reason doesn’t matter. The point is, a bunch of us got together and talked about what happened after we found Senator Sherma’s body, and it got me thinking. You left before the crew from the Academy got there. At the time, I was terrified you’d gone off to tattle to Flatfoot or someone. Right after, I assumed that you’d done exactly that but stopped yourself at the last second, when you realized that we were doing the right thing.” He let a bit of irony slip in at the last bit, an acknowledgment of the long-gone youthful optimism that had led him to think that.

“Seems you’ve had plenty of time to yourself for thinking lately.”

_“Prowl.”_

Prowl just gave Chromedome a flat look, a look that might have been an apology if they weren’t so far past that. He didn’t press the issue, though. “And?”

“And now I just want to know. Why did you leave?”

“Why the sudden interest?”

“Because I’ve realized that’s the moment when I stopped understanding why you did the things you did,” Chromedome said. “I didn’t always agree with you, but I understood how you rationalized it. But just walking away, cutting yourself off from the chance to get more information about the situation? That doesn’t make sense. It never did.”

“None of that explains _why the sudden interest_.” Prowl suddenly appeared very, very focused on the datapad that happened to be front and center on his desk. To the uninitiated onlooker, he looked disinterested. To Chromedome, it was an age-old tell – Prowl wasn’t comfortable with where the conversation was heading.

He was about to get more so. Chromedome couldn’t get any more uncomfortable, so he was willing to push it. “Because I think I can understand you, if I had a little more information. I know you well enough to know that what Ultra Magnus said the other day was wrong.”

“You could have spoken up that day.” Prowl’s tone was defensive.

Chromedome would have said _sorry_ if this was a conversation with any other mech. As it was, he continued on. “I think if you tell me that, maybe I’ll understand why you sent Overlord on the ship against my wishes. Why you instructed Drift and Brainstorm – and Rodimus, apparently – to _manipulate_ me into doing what you wanted – why you went to all that effort, and haven’t even asked me if I found out what you wanted to know.”

Prowl’s datapad clattered to the desk as he stood, placing his palms on the surface in front of him. “I haven’t asked because I wasn’t supposed to be involved. Brainstorm was supposed to act on the information you gained independently of my supervision.” 

Brainstorm hadn’t asked about what he’d seen in Overlord’s mind either, but Chromedome hadn’t expected him to. “And you don’t want to know?” Chromedome wasn’t even sure why he was asking. He didn’t really believe that the ability to create Phase Sixers would help the Autobots – or help anyone. But the thought that all this might be worth something, somehow, was too intoxicating not to push on.

“Why did you come here, Tumbler? For comfort? Absolution?”

“For answers.” Chromedome had been prepared for the conversation to be turned back on him.

“If you weren’t… _you_ , you would have guessed by now. I did it for you.”

“ _What?”_

“I left, and I told Pax that I wouldn’t go to Flatfoot on the condition that you were kept out of harm’s way.”

Four-million-year-old jigsaw pieces snapped into place in Chromedome’s mind. “If you weren’t _you_ , you would have taken my desires and beliefs into consideration, instead of just my safety.”

“Yes, yes, I was a terrible partner. Our supervisors should have realized that I was never going to be a mech who played well with others.”

“They thought you could change.”

“And you? You always could have left.”

“I didn’t want to.”

Prowl’s fingers were curled familiarly into the edge of the desk (which was, for obvious reasons, bolted to the floor). Chromedome could start another fight now, so easily. Or he could leave it at this, with things between them just marginally less awful. 

“Good luck with the trial,” he said on his way out the door. “I know you won’t need it.” 


End file.
